I was looking at the site for the current webhost of a potential client just now, and wanted to see what kind of technology these guys used.  Here’s a verbatim copy of what exists on their site.

This may not seem terribly shocking to the untrained eye, but I almost broke the uneasy silence of my office with a bladder shattering laugh.

For those who see what I’m talking about: Yeah, really?  That’s something only you guys do?  bullshit…

For everyone else: Two big problems here

Image maps (the ability to click on different parts of an image and go to different links) are an intrensic capability of HTML.  Anyone, anywhere, at any time can create an image map. Watch:

<map></map>

That took me literally 2 seconds.  Now there isn’t anything to click in that image map and it won’t show up on a page, but it’s an image map damnit.  The ability to create one is nothing special so why the hell are these people listing it as a selling point for THEIR business?

Rollover images, buttons, and links, simply mean that, when you put your mouse over the item, it changes color, size, pictues, whatever.  It comes in handy especially for text links when you want to show someone that, yes, you really can click this thing and something will happen.

Again, however, this is nothing unique:  it is the inherent ability of the available technology.  Allow me:

<a id="example">Cone of Silence</a>




#example{	background:url(picture.gif) top left no-repeat;	display:block; } 
#example:hover{ background-position:bottom left; } 

Oh look…three lines of code.  Now that might look like something confusing, but I will probably forget that I even took the <1 minute to write those lines before I go to bed tonight.

Nothing. Special.

Oh wait… You may have noticed that I did this using a technology called Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).  But their list that I showed you doesn’t say that they use CSS. They use JAVAScript. That means that instead of the three toddler-simple lines I just wrote, they’ll use something like this:

if ( document.images ){
 eg_on = new Image ( );
 eg_off = new Image ( );
 eg_on.src = "images/eg_on.gif";
 eg_off.src = "images/eg_off.gif";
 function button_on ( imgId )
 {
   if ( document.images )
   {
     butOn = eval ( imgName + "_on.src" );
     document.getElementById(imgId).src = butOn;
   }
 }

 function button_off ( imgId )
 {
   if ( document.images )
   {
     butOff = eval ( imgName + "_off.src" );
     document.getElementById(imgId).src = butOff;
   }
 }
}

<a href="#" onmouseout="button_off('eg'); return true" onmouseover="button_on('eg'); return true">
  <img src="images/eg_off.gif" style="width: 64px; height: 64px; border: none;" alt="Button" id="eg"/>
</a>

Ha.  Riiiight.  Oh and guess what else?  JAVAscript is what they call a “client-side” scripting language.  So it might not work the same on every computer, or some people might opt to turn it off.  Yeah good luck with that.

WTF Mate?

Last time I checked, the ability to do something that everyone else can do is nothing special.  So, saying that you can type the same code as any 13 year old is possibly the worst selling point for your business. ever.  It’s like saying “My cupcakes are superior because I use cake! and I put them in cups! Huzzah!”

alright I’m done.  Bitching over and out.